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DOCUMENT RESUME ED 325 977 EA 022 479 AUTHOR Goldman, Paul TITLE Occupational Versus Organizational Socialization of High School Teachers: Theoretical and Policy Issues. PUB DATE Aug 87 NOTE 21p.; Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association (Chicago, IL, August 1987). PUB TYPE Reports - Evaluative/Feasibility (142) -- Speeches/Conference Papers (150) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *Beginning Teachers; *Career Development; *Departments; High Schools; *Organizational Theories; Professional Development; *Socialization; Teacher Education; *Teacher Orientation ABSTRACT Despite recent efforts to overhaul teacher training and redesign the American teacher, reform advocates acknowledge that not enough is known about predicting education work force outcomes or their effects on classroom results. Lack of a strong conceptual background and a rigorous practice teaching experience handicaps beginning teachers and provides an inadequate foundation for subsequent career development. Teacher education reform may have gained political momentum more quickly than a research base could be developed. However, this paper suggests that insights and propositions are available from the literature and that applications of social science theories and research on professional, occupational, and organizational socialization will improve our understanding of teacher socialization. To understand the organizational context of high school teacher socialization, one must examine the reciprocal relationship between training and employing organizations and the effects that departmental knowledge and social organization may have cn the ways teachers learn their craft over a period of years or even decades. The virtual:y continuous interaction between the institution of occupational orientation (the universitY) and the institution of organizational socialization (the school) is accomplished through publications, special partnerships, and a continual influx of newly graduated teachers. Departmental knowledge bases exhibit broad, substantial differences in tite development of occupational communities affecting teacher socialization. (33 references) (MLH) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ***********************************************************************

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Page 1: DOCUMENT RESUME - ERICDOCUMENT RESUME ED 325 977 EA 022 479 AUTHOR Goldman, Paul TITLE Occupational Versus Organizational Socialization of High School Teachers: Theoretical and Policy

DOCUMENT RESUME

ED 325 977 EA 022 479

AUTHOR Goldman, Paul

TITLE Occupational Versus Organizational Socialization ofHigh School Teachers: Theoretical and PolicyIssues.

PUB DATE Aug 87

NOTE 21p.; Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of theAmerican Sociological Association (Chicago, IL,

August 1987).

PUB TYPE Reports - Evaluative/Feasibility (142) --Speeches/Conference Papers (150)

EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage.

DESCRIPTORS *Beginning Teachers; *Career Development;*Departments; High Schools; *Organizational Theories;Professional Development; *Socialization; TeacherEducation; *Teacher Orientation

ABSTRACTDespite recent efforts to overhaul teacher training

and redesign the American teacher, reform advocates acknowledge thatnot enough is known about predicting education work force outcomes ortheir effects on classroom results. Lack of a strong conceptualbackground and a rigorous practice teaching experience handicapsbeginning teachers and provides an inadequate foundation forsubsequent career development. Teacher education reform may havegained political momentum more quickly than a research base could bedeveloped. However, this paper suggests that insights andpropositions are available from the literature and that applicationsof social science theories and research on professional,occupational, and organizational socialization will improve ourunderstanding of teacher socialization. To understand theorganizational context of high school teacher socialization, one mustexamine the reciprocal relationship between training and employingorganizations and the effects that departmental knowledge and socialorganization may have cn the ways teachers learn their craft over aperiod of years or even decades. The virtual:y continuous interactionbetween the institution of occupational orientation (the universitY)and the institution of organizational socialization (the school) isaccomplished through publications, special partnerships, and acontinual influx of newly graduated teachers. Departmental knowledgebases exhibit broad, substantial differences in tite development ofoccupational communities affecting teacher socialization. (33references) (MLH)

***********************************************************************Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made

from the original document.***********************************************************************

Page 2: DOCUMENT RESUME - ERICDOCUMENT RESUME ED 325 977 EA 022 479 AUTHOR Goldman, Paul TITLE Occupational Versus Organizational Socialization of High School Teachers: Theoretical and Policy

U S DEPARTMENT Of EDUCATIONOffice of Educational Research and Improvement

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0 Minor changes have been made to ImproveduCttOn 0t.telity

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OCCUPATIONAL VERSUS ORGANIZATIONAL SOCIALIZATION OF HIGH SCHOOL TEACHERS:

THEORETICAL AND POLICY ISSUES

Paul GoldmanDepartment of Educational Policy and Management

University of OregonEugene, OR 97403-1215

(503) 686-5077

Paper Presented at the Annual Meetings of the AmericanSociological Association, Chicago, August 17, 1987

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OCCUPATIONAL VERSUS ORGANIZATIONAL SOCIALIZATION OF

HIGH SCHOOL TEACHERS: THEORETICAL AND POLICY ISSUES

I. Teacher Training and Socialization as Policy Issue

The educational establishment--in fact educators

generally--have in recent years been faced with an anxious

public and, in most states, active, inquisitive legislators

who confront them with perceived and real inadequacies in

public education. The current remedy of choice is to overhaul

and revitalize teacher training, to do what the New York Times

called "redesigning the American teacher" (Fiske, 1987). We

can see these efforts particularly in recommendations

proposals for making the five-year teaching degree a

requirement for teacher certification and employment. Two

prestigious organizations, the Holmes Group (1985) consisting

of Deans of colleges of education in research universities,

and the Carnegie Commission (1986), consisting of a blue-

ribbon panel of educators, public officials, and other

distinguished citizens were emphatic in making this

recommendations.

Descriptions of apparently successful five-year teaching

degree programs at several universities are beginning to

appear in journals addressed to practitioners (Blass and

Dunbar, 1986; Fiske, 1987; Olson, 1986; Scannell, 1986).

These programs attempt to remedy concerns that new teachers

are ill-prepared in the liberal arts components of traditional

undergraduate degrees and that typical student teaching

3

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experiences neither screen potential teachers nor provide

sufficient exposure to the realities of teaching life that new

teachers are prepared for-the shock of entering the

profession. The implied intent is that the lack of both a

strong conceptual background and a rigorous practice teaching

experience handicaps not only new teachers, but does not

provide an adequate foundation for subsequent career

development.

The core of these recommended changes is the equipping of

new teachers with a liberal arts major, with a concentration

of training in teaching techniques, including lengthy on-site

internships, into the last two years. There is a correlary

interest in making entry into teacher training programs more

"competitive," at least as measured by the comparative.SAT

scores and GPAs of education majors relative to those of other

undergraduate students. Possible teacher licensing tests--

perhaps even a national test--are discussed in many proposals.

These proposals have received widespread support, but little

significant funding. University presidents have endorsed

these proposals (Olson, 1987). Several state legislatures

have, in recently completed sessions, mandated five-year

teacher training degrees as requirements for new teacher

certification. Both the NEA and the AFT, or at least their

well-entrenched presidents, are enthusiastic about teacher

training reform. They, and other reformers, hope that new

programs will result in a more ."professional" teaching labor

force, may translate into increased dollars for teacher

occupational vs. organizational socialization, p. 2

4

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galarig ag w:=:11 ag greater profeggional control over the

teacher labor market. Teacher unions see these changes as

having a potentially significant impact on their political and

bargaining power as well. A long term hope is that more

rigorous programs will improve the profession's image and will

result eventually in superior education for the nation's

children.

However, many of the major arguments supporting these

policies are philosophical aod political, and not supported by

an established and broadly accepted research base. Even on

such basic factual issues as the relationship between supply

and demand for teachers to century's end--a singularly

important question if we are to restrict entry by using more

stringent standards--there is considerable debate on how to

interpret available statistics (Olson and Rodman, 1987).

Moreover, on this issue state-by-state differences may be

enormous. Supporters of teacher training reform acknowledge

that we do not yet know enough to predict program outcomes for

the education labor force, much less eventual impact on

classroom results. Moreover, two comprehensive surveys of

teachers (Lortie, 1975; Kottcamp, et al., 1986) have little to

say about socialization of teachers or even about the first-

year teacher experiences. The Metropolitan Life (Harris,

1985) surveys of teacher attitudes and most similar statewide

surveys employ pre-coded telephone interviews or self-

administered questionnaires. Hence, questions about teacher

training are retrospective over long periods about preparation

occupational vs. organizational socialization, p. 3

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efficacy, and generate little information about developmental

processes as experienced by individuals or organizations.

Teacher preparation reform may have been an issue that

gained political momentum far more quickly than a research

base could he developed, it is nonetheless almost in place.

The time is ripe for educational and organizational

sociologists to begin studying its impacts. In this paper I

suggest that insights and propositions are available from the

literature and that by clearer thinking about how college

students learn to be teachei's during their undergraduate days,

about how they first experience being a teacher, and most of

all, about how departmental and school building life provides

a template for continuous professional socialization and

development throughout their teaching careers. In doing so, I

argue that applications of social science thenries and

research about socialization generally, and about

"professional," "occupational," and "organizational

socialization" will improve our understanding of teacher

socialization.

One way to begin this projecc is to focus attention on

teacher socialization in high schools. This strategy has some

particular advantages because high school teacher training in

most states and jurisdictions already incorporates two

elements of the reform agenda: an academic major and, in most

cases, five rather than four years of academic training

including some internship experience. Teachers entering

junior highs (as opposed to middle schools) have comparable

occupational vs. organizational socialization, p. 4

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env..mmeartc.t.,10n.a Hence, by focusing attention on the socialization of high

school teachers we may explore some of the issues generic to five year

training programs.

At the same time, we remind the reader that socialization of new

teachers is an organizational as well as an individual process. Any

generalizations about tenher socialization must compensate for

differences between elementary and secondary schools. The comprehensive

high schools in which the majority of the nation's students are taught

are far larger and much more organizationally complex than the elementary

schools or middle schools that feed ninth and tenth graders into them.

Departmentalizationthe organization of knoweldge by disciplines--is a

major reason for this.

II. High School Teacher Socialization as "Moment of Truth"

How do high school teachers learn their jobs? What do we know

about this process? Blase (1986: 100), argues that "research on teacher

socialization has focused almost exclusively on beginning teachers or on

limited dimensions of the experienced teacher's socialization." In

general, high school teachers learn "subjects" as part of their college

majors and develop classroom management skills and appropriate collegial

behavior when they take their first job. Significantly, however, there

appears to be little or any research focusing specifically on the academic

side of teacher training, or for that matter, on how prospective teachers

experience their college years in a fashion that might be different from

experiences of students headed towards other types of careers. Vreeland

and Bidwell (1966) studied major-by-major differences at Harvard, but

their frame of reference was faculty perceptions of their own discipline

occupational vs. organizational socialization, p. 5

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rather than student experiences. The undifferentiated nature of

collegiate experience seems not to have engendered the same type of

absorbing ethnographic research that we find, for instance, in studies of

training programs in medicine or psychiatry (Becker, et al. 1961; Light,

1980). LeCompte and Ginsburg (1987) did study teacher trainet., and hence

provide one significant exception. Their finding that because "students

discount both the value of what their professors want them to learn and

the college's assessment of their own achievement, it may be difficult to

predict the degree to which a training program influences their future

behaviors as professions (sic)" is less than encouraging (LeCompte and

Ginsburg, 1987: 18).

Lortie (1975: 59), however, notes that the break between

"occupational" and "organizational" socialization may not be dramatic.

New teachers experience "mediated entry" into the profession and come to

their first job with expectations fostered by the student teaching

experience. Anticipatory socialization aside, research on new teachers

suggests a gradual shift from "idealism to realism . . . during the, first

few teaching years" (Blase, 1986: 100; McArthur, 1978; Willower, Eidell, &

Hoy, 1967).

These studies of beginning teachers report findings consistent with

parallel research on organizational socialization in the private sector.

Feldman (1976), for instance, argues that socialization to new

organizational positions encompasses the sequential stages of (1)

anticipatory socialization, (2) accommodation, and (3) role management.

Jones (1986) and Louis (1980) discuss the "reality" shock new employees

face, suggesting that "institutionalized socialization tactics" may be

successful in attenuating new employee disorientation and enhancing work

occupational vs. organizational socialization, p. 6

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adjustment. These researchers have not entirely captured the ways in

which organizational socialization is a two-way process by which newcomers

may influence tLe organizations they join or the extent to which

organizational socialization is a long-term, virtually lifelong process.

4ones is sensitive to this issue, .suggesting in an earlier article (1983)

that socialization is a long-term process requiring longitudinal,research

that also studies what individuals bring to their new orpnizations.

The most widely-cited work on the issue, Van Maanen and Schein's

(1979) "Toward A Theory of Organizational Socialization," specifically

emphasize organizational efforts to incorporate new members. Their frame

of reference is the large corporation, allowing them to assume the

presence of the relatively extensive training and trainee programs that

are common in the private sector. They argue that organizations may

differ on P number of areas, including whether socialization is collective

or individual, formal or informal, sequential and serial or random and

disjunctive, and fixed or variable. Operationalizing these concepts into

measurable variables, and then assessing their frequency and impact could

improve our understanding of teacher socialization. Translating the Van

Maanen-Schein theoretical framework, and interpolating research findings

derived from new employees in corporations, into the educational arena

leaves us with some important questions about units of analysis. Should

we see the district, the building, or, in very large schools, the

department as the ultimate socializing agency for new teachers. What

roles do the classroom and the teachers' lounge--obviously the two spots

where new and old teachers spend most of their time--play in the

sGcialization process. Do districts have district-based, building-

based, or department-based orientation programs or policies? Do they have

occupational vs. organizational socialization, p. 7

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mentorship programs? Do they have any formal programs at all? Are

teachers nired to fill general job descriptions or specific job slots?

What difference does building or department size make on socialization?

What differences does it make if the new teacher is the year's only new

hire or is one of many? How do we study organizational socialization of

veteran teachers in new buildings or new districts?

Theories and research about organizational socialization of

tlachers, especially of high school teachers, must go beyond

assumptions that individuals pass directly from university training in

academic disciplines and pedagogic technique to the realities of classroom

management and organizational life. New teachers, of course, do

experience a "status passage" that transforms them from "student" to

"professional" or "teacher." From that moment, and over time, they

adjust, developing a set of functional skills that reflect their

effectiveness as teachers, their job satisfaction, and their long-term

career development. We cannot make the assumption tiat they never look

back.

III. Teacher Socialization as Ongoing Process

In arguing that employing existing theories of organizational

socialization may lead us to an inaccurate or at least, for comprehensive

high schools, an incomplete view of how individuals are actually

socialized into teaching, I will try to explore conceptually the

particularly organizational context of high school teacher socialization.

To do this it is necessary to look at the reciprocal relationship between

training and employing organizations and at the impact departmental

occupational vs. organizational socialization, p. 8

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knowledge and social organization may have on the Ways high school

teachers learn their craft over a period of years or even decades.

Significantly, there is virtually continuous interaction between the

institution of occupational orientation, the university, and the

institution of orgauizational socialization, the high school. Scholars

from university academic departments make intellectual discoveries ane

publish them. They write the textbooks high school teachers use. They

teach advanced courses high school teachers may take, or even must take,

as part of graduate degree and certification programs. Each of these

activities strengthens, and keeps continuous, relationships between

universities, as teacher training institutions, and high school buildings

and departments. Note, moreover, these relationships also exist between

university-based academics in the fields of both special education and

educational administration. In many cases a single public university has,

by reason of proximity, a special relationship with high schools in

districts within its geographic region. These relationships are less

strong in the elementary education context, although experienced teachers

in those districts accepting student teachers from nearby teacher training

institutions may have quite regular contact with new developments in

teaching.

Equally significant, of course, universities send a more-or-less

continuous stream of mew teachers, each of whom has taken not just

individual courses, but a relatively integrated departmental curriculum,

into the high schools. In fact, many new teachers are hired partially

because their knowledge is especially current, although they in most cases

have to pass through an apprenticeship period--an ordeal by fire--before

what they have to say will be taken seriously. It is through new teachers

occupational vs. organizational socialization, p. 9

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that university departments, and both the new knowledge they generate and

the established knowledge they organize and reorganize, affect the

institutional environment of classrooms, of departmental life, and of the

high school itself. New and veteran teachers may socialize one another,

especially as they work together to develop departmental curriculum.

Veteran teachers directly continue their university-based

gocialization as well. In fact, the institutional structure in many

states requires teachers to maintain certification by continuing

education. Moreover, virtually all jurisdictions at least tacitly

encourage teachers to take additional courses because most teacher

contracts reward participation through salary schedules in which steps

correspond to post-baccalaureate university credit hours.

This mutual interaction perspective suggests a continuous process,

one that may generally be true for most high school teachers teachers and

departments. However, we need to underscore the variability that exists

between departments within most comprehensive high schools and the

consistency of that pattern of variability between high schools.

Discipline-based departments differ from one another and these differences

are substantial in that they reflect differences in both the structure of

knowledge, the ways that knowledge is organized by teachers in order to

facilitate their students' learning, and in the ways departments may

relate to building administration, district administration, and elements

of the public school environment such as parents, state department of

education officials, legislators, and others.

Departmental knowledge bases are necsarily reflections of the

intellectual disciplines--biology, history, language--from which they are

derived. That there are broad and substantial differences between

occupational vs. organizational socialization, p. 10

12

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university departments is well-known and, judging from extensive research

literature, relatively we.il-understood (Biglan, 1973a; 1973b; Lodahl and

Gordon, 1972; 1973; Smart and Elton, 1975; Vreeland and Bidwell, 1966).

Most of this research has relied heavily on Kuhn's (1977) concept of

paradigm. Paradigms, "the shared commitments of a snientific group...what

the members of a scientific community, and they alone, share," are social

as well as intellectual constructs (Kuhn, 1977: 294). They reflect the

way in which scholars construct and view the world, and their sense of

paradigm is nurtured and enhanced through undergraduate and graduate

training, research, writing and teaching. As undergraduate majors, and

later as subject-matter specialists, high school teachers are exposed to

and come to adopt much of the paradigmatic world-view of their discipline.

They reinforce the paradigm through continuing education and exposure and

because they become identified, and develop self-identities, as chemists,

mathematicians, or poets.

As Lodahl and Gordon (1972; 1973) and Vreeland and Bidwell (1966)

point out, scientific disciplines differ in their consistency, their

rigor, their impenetrability by outsiders, and the degree of internal

consensus. Their research focuses exclusively on higher education--on

research universities in fact--and on academic and scientific disciplines

at their highest levels of sophistication close to the cutting edge of

intellectual discovery. Interest in the consequences of disciplinary and

departmental organization has been nurtured by those studying university

budgeting from the "resource dependence" perspective who argue that

discip7inary differences in power are related to both the structure of

disciplinary knowledge and access to external funding (Pfeffer, 1981).

Departmental organization in high schools has similar consequences and

occupational vs. organizational socialization, p. 11

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-

each of the maJor secondary school academic departments--Enslish,

mathematics, science, and social studies--faces a unique task environment,

affecting both its power vis A vis internal and external constituencies

and influencing ways in which teachers may, can, or must work with one

another (Paule, 1986).

High school departments differ most markedly.on the degree to vhich

staff training is homogeneous and intellectual consensus strong and on the

degree to which outsiders--building and district administrators, state

regulators, legislators--can be successful in influencing curricula.

Mathematics teachers and their departments, for instance, deal with

subject matter material they understand as hierarchical in its learning

requirements, but about which.most department outsiders may know little

and they can resist effectively outside efforts to influence curriculum.

English and social studies teachers, by contrast, deal with knowledge thzt

is in the public domain and which administrators, legislators, and the

public believe they have considerable knowledge and which, more important,

need not be learned in a specific sequence (Paule, 1986).

Differences between departments, and experiential similarities of

members within departments, encourage the development of what Van Maanen

and Barley (1984) have termed "occupational communities." Math

departments are likely to have strong occupational communities because of

needs they have to couple tightly their course sequences. Teachers in

English/Language Arts departments may share a broad point of view and a

love of literature, but different emphases within collegiate majors and

different teaching sub-specialties and interests--drama, poetry, American

literature for instance--encourage development of occupational communities

as a function of relationships to the larger building or district

occupational vs. organizational socialization, p. 12

14_

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organization. Science and social studies departments are a bit less

homogeneous, as each is composed of teachers trained in several

discLalines. In social studies teachers who have majored in history,

sociology, or economics may nave some difficulty corolg to complete

consensus on their common subject matter, and it is possible that

differences may be reinforced by the degree to which teachers continue

their education in interdisciplinary or narrowly disciplinary courses and

programs. Science teachers, especially physics and chemistry teachers the

structure of whose disciplinary majors resembles mathematics, may,

especially in large departments, form two or three occupational

communities.

IV. Research and Policy Implications

While we think of socialization into teaching as a process by which

young men and women learn pedagogic skills and discipline based subject

matter and are the recipients of principal and veteran teacher wisdom,

this does not fully define the socialization process in high schools.

Frequently new teachers bring more than the callowness of and enthusiasm

of youth to schools. They bring also new teaching ideas and new

developments in the discipline to their first jobs. In short, by hiring

new teachers, district and building administrators not only fill positions

but provide a way for older colleagues to keep in touch with their fields.

This picture of teacher socialization has some potential research

implications. First of all, it suggests that considering the building or

the department rather than the individual new teacher as a unit of

analysis will help us see some elements of teacher socialization more

clearly. While this may imply a more extensive use of observational and

occupational vs. organizational socialization, p. 13

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other "qualitative" research methods, even some excellent ethnographic

studies such as Kyle's (1987) study of a new second grade teacher focus

only un the classroom rather than the larger organizational setting.

Second, studying teacher socialization means studying more than new

teachers. Veteran teachers are participants in the socialization process

as both !gents of socialization and as learners. Research on teachers who

transfer between.bqkldings or districts,,,and especially research on

teachers from the "reserve pool," who return to teaching after an absence

of several years might help us separate out effects of learning different

aspects of the complex role of teacher. Imaginative survey approaches,

for instance those that attempt to access organizational issues such as

organizational culture or ideology may prove especially useful in

researching intra-organizational transmission of knowledge and culture.

Third, we might study specifically formally appointed agents of

organizational socialization including principals, vice-principals,

especially those who include curriculum as a primary responsibility,

department heads, and teacher mentors. It will he particularly

instructive to examine possible relationships between strategies, tactics,

and styles of "instructional leadership" and the continuing socialization

of teachers.

Policy implications are less clear cut. However, if teacher

socialization is a long term process for individual teachers, then reform

should incorporate career development activities of all kinds and probably

should not be directly solely towards university-based degree-granting

programs. National teacher boards, emphasizing national testing and

certification, especially if graded by ascending skill levels, potentially

capture the life-long nature of teacher socialization but necessarily

occupational vs. organizational socialization, p. 14

16

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define teacher competency outside the organizational framework of teacher

work and teacher learning. Because teachers differ in their ability and

motivation to continue career development, districts and the stat;s will

haye to find organizational strategies that encourage teachers to have an

active rather than passive approach to their own long-term socialization.

Finally, to the extent that districts are large enough to have flexibility

in teacher assignment, they must develop ways to look not only at fitting

teachers to vacant 'slots, but also to consider more carefully than they do

now the age and skill mix of teachers in a given department. This

requires creative collaboration with teacher unions and brings them into

the teacher sociaiization process as a more active partner.

occupational vs. organizational socialization, p. 15

17

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tickr4owlalgroents

Many of these ideas presented here were developed in

collaboration with Lynde Faule whose outstanding dissertation

on the environment of high school curriculum development

provoked literally dozens of exciting and fruitful

discussions. Bob Gilberts, Dean of the College of Education

at the University of Oregon and a member of the Holmes Group,

provoked my initial interest in teacher education reform and

generously allowed me to ransack the voluminous files he and

his staff have gathered over the past feu years. Neither of

them has seen this version of the paper and hence should not

be considered responsible for its shortcomings.

occupational vs. organizational socialization, p. 16

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_

References

Biglan, Anthony 1973"Characteristics of Subject Matter in Different AcademicAreas." Journal of Applied Psychology 57: 195-203.

Biglan, Anthony 1973."Relationships Between Subject Matter Characteristics andthe Structure and Output of University Departments."Journal of Applied Psychology 57: 204-213.

Blase, Joseph 1986. "Socialization as Humanization: One Sideof Becoming a Teacher." Sociology of Education 59: 100-113.

Blass, Rosanne and Jeffrey Dunbar 1986."Teacher Education Reform at Allegheny College."Educational Horizons (Winter): 87-89.

Feldman, D. C. 1976. "A Contingency Theory of Socialization."Administrative Science Quarterly 21: 433-52.

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